Pay Back (The Ferrari Family Book 3) Read online

  Well, we were too new to say we loved each other. In some ways, even though we shared our deepest secrets, we didn’t understand each other as well as other couples did. It was just a damn shame that one of us lived in the Bay Area and one of us lived in Europe; if it wasn’t on the opposite side of the globe, it felt like it was pretty damn close.

  Pierre stirred and stretched out his arm, signaling that he had awoken. I felt a real desire and a real temptation to ask him these questions, to see what he thought we were building toward. Most of all, I wanted to preempt any chance he might have of slinking away from me before I could ask him the question.

  But the moment just felt...too something. Not too special, not too crazy. Unexpected was true, but it wasn’t quite the word I was getting for. Suboptimal was probably the best I could think of, but even that felt incomplete. I wanted to ask him so much, but unless I knew how he felt about last night, free of the emotion, I wasn’t sure I would get a fair and honest answer.

  And in any case, it probably wasn’t best to have a serious talk when we were both naked and with each other’s juices on the other.

  Pierre grabbed a bottle of water on a nearby counter, swallowed it, and let out a breath. I was so curious to know what was running through his head, if there was anything. What little I knew of him from five years ago was that back then, there had been no time that was “too tired” time for sex. But obviously, knowing what I did now, the reason why was probably a little bit different.

  “Hmmm,” he grumbled.

  I thought of saying something, but I decided to just let him be. If I had a lot to process from the night before, Lord knew he had quite a bit to think on as well. I wasn’t the one with a deceased family.

  Eventually, after more than a minute or so had passed, he rolled over. His face registered shock when he saw me.

  “What?” I said, curious and afraid of what he was going to say.

  “I half-expected you to have walked out on me in revenge,” he said.

  He did it with a smile and chuckle, suggesting that it was meant to be a joke. I tried my best to receive it that way, but it was a little too on the nose for me, a little too close to what I had experienced.

  “Nah,” I said, deciding that it wasn’t worth raising an argument over. “Besides, this is my room, not yours, remember?”

  He chortled.

  “I am slow in the morning,” he said. “It is as if I age backward, starting as an old man, over the course of the morning.”

  “Well, that may just be in your head, but the biological Pierre that I see,” I said, biting my lip and eying what I could see of him, everything from his chest up for the moment. “Makes me feel very youthful and very excited.”

  Pierre arched his eyebrows. He got the idea. Just be in the moment.

  I leaned forward to kiss him. Our lips were both a little dry, which obviously was not the most attractive thing ever, but to be totally frank, it felt quite natural to be kissing him like this. I’d been with him fewer times than some of the men I’d dated in the past five years, and yet it still felt like I was better with him than anyone else.

  “What do you want right now?” I said, smirking.

  “What do I want?” he repeated.

  I nodded. I was aroused, but I wasn’t going to force the issue. I wanted the Pierre that couldn’t contain himself, not the Pierre still waking up. Of course, if we’re talking about what you want and don’t want, is that not what got you in trouble before?

  “To be very honest with you, I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry for what?”

  I hadn’t even meant to say it flirtatiously or sexually, but it probably did sound like that. It probably didn’t help matters that I was already horny to begin with.

  “Real food,” Pierre chuckled. “And you. But my stomach might just devour itself if I don’t get to eat real food.”

  “Well, what did you have last night?”

  Again, Pierre chuckled. I guess he was in a pretty good mood this morning. Maybe that boded well for however he wanted us to turn out. Or maybe it was really just a sign that he had made peace with the whole thing, but nothing more would come of it beyond Monday morning.

  “Honestly? Not a thing.”

  “What?”

  “I usually eat dinner somewhat late, but I did not want to show up here on a full stomach and feel quite slothful,” he said. “So I skipped out. I feel quite comfortable with my choice, but alas, the toll always comes due at some point.”

  Who was I to argue with getting breakfast? But there was one thing that I personally needed to do before going downstairs, one thing that had me a little nervous. For it was that one thing that I needed to do that had put me in this spot all these years later.

  “Let me shower first before we go down,” I said, wondering if Pierre was thinking about the same thing I did. “I don’t want to go down smelling like you.”

  “Hah,” Pierre said as he leaned forward to kiss me. “Go ahead.”

  I smiled, kissed him, and then got out from under the covers. Pierre whistled at my naked body, which made me want to rip the covers off of his and gawk at him.

  “So tell me,” I said, meaning to say this as a joke but now slowly shifting toward something a little more serious. “Will you still be here when I finish showering?”

  Pierre got half a laugh out before he stopped himself.

  “I guess I deserve that, huh?” he said. “Yes, of course. I promise that I will be here when you emerge.”

  I nodded, smiled, and headed to the bathroom, having gotten what I wanted.

  But as I turned the hot water on, as I waited for the temperature to catch up with the setting, my mind jumped back to what I really wanted, and while perhaps I had avoided getting what I feared most, that wasn’t quite the same as getting what I wanted.

  As fun as the next two days had the potential to be, there was no amount of fun that could keep me from returning to the United States. Perhaps my younger days would have made me more foolish and more prone to skipping a flight, but the bedrock of my Ferrari family meant I would not make so rash and emotional a decision as that. But that didn’t mean it would feel easy.

  What if there was a way for Pierre to come with me to the States? If he once had a family, well, callous as it was to say, it meant he no longer had a family, no longer had anything really holding him here in France besides business. And if he was as rich as I suspected him to be—billionaire, not millionaire—then it’s not like him living a continent away was an impediment.

  But was it fair for me to ask that of him when I could only guess at such questions and not know the real answer?

  And even if he agreed, we barely knew each other. I didn’t know, for example, what Pierre thought of the United States as a place to live. He didn’t know what I liked to do after a regular workday at the winery. We didn’t know if the other even wanted kids, for example.

  There was so much to uncover, and the only real way to do it was with the benefit of time. No amount of sit-down questions, lounging in hotel beds, or exotic trips would answer that.

  And for that reason, the idea of time together was both terrifying and exhilarating. It could reveal to us that our entire attraction was built upon a mirage of emotional connection that lacked the logistical support of common interests and goals. Or it could reveal that not only could it work, it could work well.

  It was hard to say which outcome was terrifying and which was exhilarating.

  I stepped into the shower and did my best to go through my routine of conditioner, shampoo, and body wash, but the whole time, I had this sort of flare in my stomach that made it difficult to concentrate. It honestly wasn’t a flare of nervousness or a flare of fear, but rather, almost one of humility; like I was in awe of all the various possibilities. My mind kind of wanted one, but I had to admit, I couldn’t say for sure which way it would go.

  And then I heard the door open, something clink, and then the door shut.

 
Did he just fucking leave me again??

  But then the bathroom door creaked open, and I peered out of the shower curtain to see Pierre standing in nothing but his boxers and a tank top shirt with two glasses of what had to be mimosas in his hand.

  “What?” I said in confusion.

  “Well,” Pierre said. “Truth be told, I was just going to wait in bed until you finished, have breakfast with you, and then, when I had the energy and libido, I was going to send you down a river of pleasure. But then I realized that after what happened before, I could not be passive in letting you shower. I had to go to the other end. I ordered us some mimosas, but I think you would prefer to have that as something to celebrate the end of what is about to happen.”

  A wicked grin formed on my face. I nodded toward the counter. It was like I had flipped a switch in Pierre, allowing him to be his sexual, seductive self. Pierre turned his body and placed both glasses on the sink counter. He then rolled his boxers down and covered himself. It obviously wasn’t a secret what his cock looked like, but there was something so...naughty, so elusive, so just out of reach about his behavior that I found myself wanting to literally yank his arms free so I could get my hands on him.

  Pierre entered the shower, his head bent. He stood right under the shower, letting the water fall down him like Niagara Falls, and lifted his head. I knew right then I would never forget the look in his eyes, the look of primal lust that said he would be satisfied with nothing less than having me.

  He took one step toward me, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me with his tongue deep into my mouth. His hands squeezed my buttocks, and my whole body pulsed with a warm glow. I did the same to him, but I lost the ability to think about what my hands were doing when he kissed my neck. Oh, fuck…

  I tilted my head back, closing my eyes, mumbling his name as best as I could. Blindly, my hand found his cock by luck and started to stroke, but I couldn’t pretend there was any rhyme or rhythm to what I was doing. I was just doing, not thinking, not in a flow; Pierre had me in his grasp in every literal and metaphorical sense of the phrase.

  His mouth moved from my neck to my breasts as he took one hand, pushed my breast up to his mouth, and suckled, while his other hand moved down to my clit and rubbed. I clenched my body and pressed against him, biting my lip as I could not contain the gasps of pleasure.

  I had thought last night had provided the ultimate pleasure. Perhaps from an emotional sense, the release of five years of pent-up emotions, it had. But from a physical sense, it was like Pierre knew every intricacy of my body, from how the area just under my breasts was far more sensitive than I imagined most women were, to how only one finger was needed inside of me to make me start to throb.

  He twirled me around so my ass was pressed against his hard cock. All I could think—if you could even call it thinking—was how badly I wanted him inside of me. His finger felt amazing, and his thumb rubbing on my clit was surely going to get me to orgasm sooner rather than later, but fuck, why go for great when you could get the best? And yet so enthralled, so captivated, was I by what Pierre was doing that these were merely flashing thoughts in my mind, not coherent requests I could verbalize.

  “Oh, Pierre, yes,” I said, arching my neck to give him greater access.

  And then I felt that tightening, that tension in me that I’d felt more than once last night. Only he could get me off with such ease. Only Pierre.

  I bit my lip and then let out a stilted cry as I came from his finger and thumb, my pussy clenching tightly around him. My body quivered under his spell, and I might very well have collapsed to the floor in pleasure if not for him holding me up. I started to giggle and laugh as I came down from the orgasm, turning around and kissing him.

  Now I had control. Now I was going to do it my way.

  “Did that make up for lost time?” Pierre said.

  I smirked and held his face close to mine.

  “It’s getting there,” I said. “But I want you to fuck me, Pierre. Take me.”

  I didn’t need to repeat myself. He pressed me against the wall of the shower, kissed me passionately, positioned himself right outside me, and then entered.

  Oh. My. Fucking. Word.

  I didn’t have time to describe what it felt like, because Pierre just thrust into me over and over again, his cock swollen inside of me. Whenever a thought popped to mind, it got brushed aside by the feeling of him.

  I looked into those eyes, those carnal, primal, lustful eyes, those eyes that had shifted from soft and gentle to like a lion devouring its prey after two weeks of starving. Oh, fuck, that was so fucking hot to see.

  “Yes, Pierre, yes!” I said.

  He turned me around and did the same from behind, only this time he had a better angle, making it so he got even deeper and deeper. Just as he had the night before, he got me off a second time, the second orgasm somehow coming quicker than the first, but the rolling pleasure waving through my body all the same.

  Though he did not have a condom as he had the night before, we had an easy solution for that. When he told me he felt he was getting close, I let him slide out, got on my knees, and worked to suck him off. My lips wrapped around his tip, my fingers curled around his shaft, and together, the two of them worked to pull his seed out, to get him to finish inside of my mouth.

  Pierre groaned above me. I looked up into those handsome eyes as I felt him swell in me. I wanted to swallow all of him; I had to. I had to have him finish in me.

  “Oh, fuck!”

  And then, with a loud groan, his cock twitched, firing all of his seed to the back of my throat. Though there was a momentary gag, I managed to keep it down, slurping and swallowing everything that he gave me. His hands went to my head as he held on for dear life.

  And when he finished, I sat back on my heels, licked my lips, and kissed him. He didn’t mind in the slightest.

  “Now we’ve made up for lost time.”

  Chapter 12: Pierre

  I hadn’t worked out the day before because I didn’t have energy, but I was pretty sure after the way Layla had just drained me, if I’d had to so much as jog on the treadmill, my legs would have wobbled and collapsed underneath me.

  As it was, just getting out of the shower was an entire ordeal. Layla seemed to have the opposite “problem”—she jumped out of the shower like I had just injected her body with the elixir of caffeine, and she handed me my mimosa while I still stood in the shower, just trying to regain the energy to walk back and get dressed.

  “Boy, I haven’t felt that kind of passion in ages,” she said. “You are something else, Pierre.”

  “I try,” I said with a tired smirk, but it was the good kind of tired, like a fatigue I had earned. “Let me have a moment.”

  “Of course,” she said, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sense that there was some concern in her voice. I could not blame her—it was not like the previous five years of justified disgust had vanished with a good night and morning of sexual pleasure.

  I sipped on my mimosa in silence, thankful that I had this opportunity. But I reminded myself there was much to learn and much to unveil, and it made no sense to project ahead until a clearer future was established.

  Eventually, I got out of the shower, finished my mimosa, and put on clothes. Layla put on jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Are you not planning on going out after?” I asked.

  “Are you planning on leaving this room?” she said with a chuckle, making a point to eye me up and down to my nakedness. “You have to put on something!”

  “What, are you saying it would be unbecoming of a gentleman to go to breakfast in the nude?”

  “If I need to say it, then I think maybe you need to experience it so you can learn the hard way.”

  “The hard way, eh?”

  Layla burst out laughing. I suspected she did not think I was capable of making the occasional juvenile joke.

  “Just throw something on, we’ll figure it out after.”

 
; I grabbed some jeans and a tight-fitting button down. We left the room holding hands, almost without even intending to, but when our hands bumped together, it just felt like something that was supposed to happen.

  It being Saturday, the breakfast had turned into a buffet, and so we went our separate ways to get our food. She went for the typical American fare—sausage, bacon, and eggs—while I preferred something a little lighter, especially on buffet days. I had no problems with the taste of American food, but in unlimited quantities, it was not hard to see how many Americans struggled with portion control.

  I sat down first, but Layla was not far behind me. When she sat down, I noticed that she looked like she had something on the tip of her tongue, as if she was searching for the right words.

  “So,” she said as she stabbed her first sausage link. “Let’s have an uncomfortable conversation about what this means.”

  Well, I had to admit, there was something of great value to having such an honest conversation so quickly. I could not blame her, either, after the way I had abandoned her.

  “Just...very well,” I said.

  “Do you not want to right now?” she said, seemingly without judgment.

  “One second.”

  I took a sip of my coffee. Even if it was a mere placebo effect that I immediately felt awake, it was enough.

  “Promise me you will be kind and compassionate,” I said. “Topics of family and future are difficult for me.”

  “Of course,” Layla said.

  It still surprised her to see me vulnerable. To be fair, it surprised me too.

  “I want to believe that for as much as we’ve experienced recently,” Layla said, “that this means more than just a fun weekend of pleasure and then we move on. I want to believe that what we’ve done for each other and how we’ve grown and how we’ve been honest...that it means something, you know? Like, I don’t want what we have to be a circle, to be contained in a loop of honesty and sex and more honesty and sex. I want to see what else there is. But…”